Bill Kristol has a must read piece in Time Magazine about his trip to Iraq and his impressions of what is happening on the ground there:

Before going to Iraq, I didn't fully appreciate all the things our military leaders are doing there. Obviously, they're fighting--and doing so more discriminately and effectively than they did in 2003 or 2004. But that's just the beginning. Now that Petraeus and Odierno are pursuing a real counterinsurgency strategy, their subordinate commanders and officers are spending a lot of time engaging the local population in security, political and economic efforts. It's clear from the briefings by colonels and lieutenant colonels at various forward operating bases that they have internalized Petraeus' counterinsurgency doctrine. Occasionally you'll hear a leftover Rumsfeld-era talking point about how our job is to get out of the way and transition everything over to the Iraqis as quickly as possible. And I did see a brigade commander who, when asked by an Iraqi shopkeeper why electricity was so sporadic, replied politely that electric power wasn't his job.

But that was the exception. The rule in Iraq is that brigade and battalion commanders--and even captains and lieutenants--are also taking on responsibilities as diplomats, politicians, development consultants, educators. The limited number of American civilians (and the virtual absence of Europeans) has thrown all the responsibility of nation building--more accurately, community building--on the U.S. military. And rather than complain, the soldiers do it willingly and even cheerfully, and with remarkable competence.